As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
New reviews are posted daily, but to search for earlier reviews please click on the Mystery People link below and select 'reviews' from the welcome page. This will display an alphabetic option for you to find the review you would like to read

Recent Events

For PREVIOUS REVIEWS- Click on MYSTERY PEOPLE below -

Saturday, 30 May 2015

‘Falling in Love’ by Donna Leon

Published by William
Heineman, 9 April2015. ISBN:
9780434023585

In this, the 23rd Donna Leon novel
featuring Commissario Brunetti of the Venice police, we meet again the fabulous
soprano Flavia Petrelli whom we met in the first Brunetti novel, Death at La Fenice. Now, after many years and a number of husbands
and lovers (of both sexes) Flavia whose voice has achieved full maturity has
returned to the opera house La Fenice to sing the lead in Puccini’s Tosca. She is quite rightly applauded by
all for the strength and passion of her performance. Her fans are numerous. But
there seems to be one fan whose admiration amounts to obsession: Flavia is
being bombarded by bouquets of yellow roses, not just in Venice on stage but in
her dressing room and even in her flat. Nor is it only in Venice; there have
been similar episodes in London and Paris. Flavia is as strong and independent
as Floria Tosca herself but this anonymous pursuit amounts, she feels, to
stalking and stalkers, she knows, can be dangerous. She seeks advice from
Brunetti but he is not minded to take Flavia’s fears seriously until a young
woman, also a singer, whom Flavia knows slightly, is pushed down some steps and
seriously injured. Brunetti suspects there is a link but it is difficult to
establish although in the end he does do so but by this time Flavia’s own life
is in danger. Once again he has had to rely on Signorina Elettra’s internet
skills and on the co-operation of his police colleagues, while his boss
Vice-Quaestore Patta does his best to obstruct him.

It’s always a
pleasure to read a Brunetti novel; doubly so in this case because the first
opera I ever saw was Tosca and I was
utterly blown away by the music and the drama. And Brunetti’s domestic life is
always a relief to come to after all those police procedurals in which the
investigating officer is a lone misery beset by relationship and alcohol
problems. Apparently the Brunetti novels have been produced for German TV;
maybe one day they could be bought for the BBC4 Saturday night slot.

------

Reviewer:
Radmila May

Donna
Leon was born in
Montclair, New Jersey of Irish/Spanish descent. She first went to Italy as a
student in 1965 returning regularly over the next decade while pursuing a
career as an academic in the States and then later in Iran, (where she taught English
to helicopter pilots for three years), China (teaching literature at a
university near Shanghai) and finally Saudi Arabia. Donna then decided to
move to Venice
permanently, where she has now lived for more than twenty five years.Her novels are all set in Venice,
featuring police Commissario Guido Brunette and are widely praised, amongst
other things, for her ability to create a remarkable sense of place, and to
conjure up the sights and smells of Venice.

Radmila Maywas born in the US but has lived in the UK ever since apart from
seven years in The Hague. She read law at university but did not go into
practice. Instead she worked for many years for a firm of law publishers and
has been working for them off and on ever since. For the last few years she has
been one of three editors working on a new edition of a practitioners' text
book on Criminal Evidence by her late husband, publication of which has been
held up for a variety of reasons but hopefully will be published by the end of
2015. She also has an interest in archaeology in which subject she has a
Diploma.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.